Alexander Gentile
UML Student

Have you ever wondered where your favorite musical artists came from? Assuredly they one day picked up an instrument or decided to start singing in the shower, and thought to themselves, “I’m ready to give something to the world.” They spent years practicing, met other musicians that helped to develop a chemistry that created something special and finally decided to play their first gig.

They came from the dingy clubs, the basement practice spaces, the far-away gigs that didn’t even pay them gas-money, all in the hopes of reaching out to an audience and making it big. Yet though there was chemistry, a hard work ethic and a bit of luck involved, each and every musician that has made it somewhere owes his or her success to the people that took a chance on him or her in those first few gigs. Can you imagine what it must feel like to have seen the Sex Pistols’ first performance at St. Martin’s College and, only a short time later, become a band that would change the way the world understand music?

We take bands like Radiohead or Weezer, hip-hop artists like Jay-Z, pop sensations like Taylor Swift all for granted, because they give us what we want, and they do it well.This disparate selection of musicians all have one thing in common: their beginnings were meager and their success, especially from their vantage points, was a long shot for which they worked with insurmountable effort to turn into their dream.

Now, more than ever, we need to start embracing the local scene that is germinating in our back yard. On many occasions, bands with talent are being subjected to the same old few people that frequent local shows, sometimes a tight-knit and campy group. With an open mind, we could find something that surprises and inspires us. “Going out” does not simply mean getting drinks or trivia night.

Let’s meditate on a doomsday scenario by looking at how we are introduced to new music. A band gets picked up by a record label, and with all the resources that label possesses they are promoted, recorded and toured around. They enter into mainstream music channels such as Spotify, YouTube and others, and we as the users of these services are served up this music on a plate that we can decide to eat from or not. Though recording and sharing music has become significantly easier in the past decade or so, the media outlets that we use are becoming increasingly able to follow and serve trends with unimagined precision. Those that do not follow the stylistic guidelines established by those trends have already lost out. Those that create music that is derivative and unoriginal have an even better chance at making it big, crushing diversity and contributing to the growth of a behemoth music industry that will someday destroy the aspirations of those that are trying to do something different and refreshing.

Statistically generated “You Might Also Like” modules are for the most part serving artists that have entered into the mainstream to some degree. Though this helps even some struggling artists, we cannot forget that a large majority of artists are overlooked. The results generated by these modules only have a limited pool of artists to choose from. This limits both the opportunity for artists who haven’t quite made the cut and the listeners from discovering something that will surprise them.

This is where we come in.

As the generation that is going to define the direction of world affairs, we possess a great opportunity for change. The ills of the music industry are well known, but we can choose to make the change. We can find something that surprises and inspires us. We can choose to take a chance on our fellow young people. Without us there is no music scene, so let’s make the discovery of new music less passive and more active. Without a music scene, there is no music.